April 26, 2011

Read this NYT article, which has a perspective — more should be done for women — but reveals much about "roster management" that should spark a discussion from many perspectives. Excerpt:

[A]s women have grown to 57 percent of American colleges’ enrollment, athletic programs have increasingly struggled to field a proportional number of female athletes. And instead of pouring money into new women’s teams or trimming the rosters of prized football teams, many colleges are turning to a sleight of hand known as roster management.... [M]any are padding women’s team rosters with underqualified, even unwitting, athletes. They are counting male practice players as women. And they are trimming the rosters of men’s teams....

Shrinking budgets also spur universities to use these tactics, said Jake Crouthamel, a former Syracuse athletic director. “It’s easier to add more people on a roster than it is to start a new sport,” he said.

Yet football, the pride of many universities and a draw for alumni, rarely faces cuts. The average Division I football team went from 95 players 30 years ago to 111 players in 2009-10.

“Football is the elephant in the whole thing,” Mr. Crouthamel said. “That’s the monster.”

So more and more women go to college, and that results in more pressure to limit men's sports and the immensely important activity of watching the men play sports. Isn't that a terrible downward spiral?

After South Florida added more than 100 football players... Lamar Daniel, a gender-equity consultant, ... recommended adding a women’s swimming team and warned that trying to comply with the proportionality option would be difficult because South Florida’s female participation numbers were too low.

But university officials tried anyway. A primary strategy was to expand the women’s running teams. Female runners can be a bonanza because a single athlete can be counted up to three times, as a member of the cross-country and the indoor and outdoor track teams.

In 2002, 21 South Florida women competed in cross-country. By 2008, the number had grown to 75 — more than quadruple the size of an average Division I cross-country team....

If I were King, (and really, I almost certainly should not be), I would disband the NCAA, and end this ridiculous madness. I love sports, and love to watch college sports, but the "college" part of college sports is a ___ joke.

This is what happens when you try to do social engineering through stupid laws and tie the results to money.

People will always find a way around the law and ways to cheat.

Fact: there are less women as a percentage of the whole who want to participate in sports compared to the percentage of men who want to participate. All the Title IX manipulating in the world is not going to change that fact.

Football revenue is vital at most division one universities. It typically pays for itself and all other sports (except basketball which pays for itself). It also takes roughly 100 athletes to "man" a team.

Many colleges have had to eliminate "minor" men's programs such as swimming, wrestling, and sometimes baseball to meet Title IX numbers.

I say set Football aside, and then apply the Title IX parity requirements to the remaining sports.

Often the "letter of Title IX law" has trumped the "spirit of Title IX law." Not a big fan of Title IX, BTW.

Football revenue is vital at most division one universities. It typically pays for itself and all other sports (except basketball which pays for itself). It also takes roughly 100 athletes to "man" a team.

Many colleges have had to eliminate "minor" men's programs such as swimming, wrestling, and sometimes baseball to meet Title IX numbers.

I say set Football aside, and then apply the Title IX parity requirements to the remaining sports.

Often the "letter of Title IX law" has trumped the "spirit of Title IX law." Not a big fan of Title IX, BTW.

Last fall, I attended the Big Ten CC championships, out at the new UW course (very cool, btw). What I noticed was the dramatic drop in the quality of female runners at, about, the bottom third of of the finishers - "padding" of rosters is exactly what crossed into my mind.

Back in the mid-90s my community college men's cross-country team was cut due to Title IX. Not that this should be the sole reason to not drop a sport, but we were at the time a consistent national title contender.One university picked up a women's equestrian team to beef up the numbers. I believe it was Fresno State. They even received a reward for complying with Title IX so well.

Not so sure about this and have never understood it except from the money perspective.

You can easily, EASILY, find walkons, 1/4 scholarship and 1/2 scholarship punching dummies. You do not need an entire different 11 guys for all five or six situations. I can understand being three or four deep (there's your practice team) in most slots, but that's still not 100 people.

Why do people think they have a right to participate in college level athletics? You need two things to make a sports program worth having at a university: 1. consumer demand and 2. qualified athletes.

Most womens sports fail in at least one of these categories. Why force it? Does a women's life really change that much by being an average player on a made up team that shouldn't exist?

Last fall, I attended the Big Ten CC championships, out at the new UW course (very cool, btw). What I noticed was the dramatic drop in the quality of female runners at, about, the bottom third of of the finishers

The daughter was on the West XC team, and is by no means a good runner, but she loved loved loved the camaraderie of the team. Maybe she'll be on the UW XC team as well for the same reason. There were lots of mediocre boy runners too (and some stellar ones), I think because (in part) they practice with the girls.

Because you're forgetting that the people that champion things like Title IX don't actually give a whip about competition and the positives therein. In fact, some of them are actively anti-competition. I had many profs like that. Got called out by one in class for wearing my jersey on the day we were supposed to wear our jerseys all day.

That's the second comment saying that. How do you/we know that to be true?

If it were true that women are just as interested in playing sports as men (in the same percentages of population) they would do so. They aren't and they don't.

We wouldn't need a forced quota system like Title IX. The statistics and facts speak for themselves, whether YOU like it or not.

I will say, however, that Title IX when it was first conceived did have the positive effect of making schools fund some sports for women. Previously, almost all funding went to men's sports. Unfortunately, like every social engineering experiment that the liberals foist upon us, they went too far and created the monster that it is today.

I was a female athlete at a Division I school, which was a great experience. My solution would be to eliminate all recruiting. I know that schools would still be able to field teams for all of their sports and I think there would be parity between similary situated schools, which would make the games very competitive and fun to watch. I think that fans would still be loyal to teams composed of walk-ons (UW has sold out the football stadium even with losing teams as long as the games were fun to watch and I think the Morton years weren't fun to watch because of the offensive system). Scholarships would be based solely on need. Of course, this would work only if the colleges' (and I would extend this to graduate schools too) admission processes were blind. By blind, I mean that applicants' names and home addresses (other than state) would not be known to the admissions officers and neither would the names of references (they would just be identified as mayor instead of Mayor Bloomberg, or elected politician instead of Senator Edward Kennedy or as basketball coach instead of Larry Byrd, etc.). Applications would identify a student's extra curricular activities that would include sports (i.e., lettered four years in a varsity sport and leadership roles), but would not specifically identify the sport. Scholarships would be based solely on need, which means that there could still be affirmative action programs but that students would be selected on the basis of their likelihood to succeed at college and not on their likelihood to perform well on the athletic field. The pro sports teams would have to figure out their own farm systems for atheletes that don't want to go to college, like baseball has now. The money saved on recruiting could fund a lot of scholarships. Also, the athletic facilities would not need to be as luxurious as they are (have you ever seen the basement of the McClain Center at the UW!!!!!), which would also save money.

I appreciate what you're trying to say, but the reason most college sports are "fun" to watch is because you're watching, in most cases, the best of the best. Granted, football STILL DOESN'T HAVE A PLAYOFF SYSTEM, but that's another blog.

Given the abilities of the current division 1 players versus a grab-bag of blind entries, I think you'd be in for, on average, very mediocre play.

The whole problem could be solved by having all college sports played naked. Women's teams would pay for themselves just fine, and the less-masculine women would get a fair chance at success. I see this creating a great deal of joy in our society, and who's against that?

My solution is to just admit a lot of people enjoy watching men's football and men's basketball. If women need more scholarships to engage in sissy-pants book learning, find a way to give them scholarships for that. They can choose to play sports or not.

It is indeed a farce, because it's based on the faulty assumption that women are the same as men, that they like to participate in sports as much as men, and that the only reason their teams are not as popular is sexism.

Because you're forgetting that the people that champion things like Title IX don't actually give a whip about competition and the positives therein.

I actually think the idea of having more sports teams available is a good idea, but that doesn’t mean schools should have to ditch a football team because they can’t find enough water polo/soccer/lacrosse/whatever female students to match the football team in numbers.

"[M]any are padding women’s team rosters with underqualified, even unwitting, athletes. They are counting male practice players as women."

If the bean-counters must be served, beans must be found for them to count; not unlike the office manager who had to make sure he had one of every Lefty-approved ethnic group, so he went down the line of cubes, tapping people on the shoulder, "You're Polynesian, you're Eskimo, you're Indian...".

Also love the line, "Female runners can be a bonanza". As bag notes, just have them run topless and they will pay for all the university's programs.

Why not do the obvious and eliminate football? It's an embarrassment anyway; most of the really good players aren't there for an education, and the coaches are waaaaay overpaid. No, I don't care that football pays for itself; it doesn't have anything to do with academics so it ought to go. I like Carrie's solutions. It's also the Ivy League solution. They have actual student-athletes and minimal corruption/criminal activity, and the coaches aren't paid millions. Good all around.

Lyssa, I am pro-sports in college simply because it's UNHEARD OF in Europe and other places for professional athletes to have an university degree.

Ronaldo (Brazil's buck-toothed soccer wonder) was playing professionally at the age of _13_, whilst 16 is common in England, since that's when you can leave school. Counter that with the US Men's soccer team, who are college-educated athletes to a MAN. No contest.

There were lots of mediocre boy runners too (and some stellar ones), I think because (in part) they practice with the girls.

I agree. I was just a little surprised to see it, with the women, at the D1 level (BTW, I ran CC in HS, too, and got to watch our guys run against the Stinzi and Hacker's several times a fall. It's been fun following Sam Hacker's races b/c of that).

With such a high percentage of college students now actually being female, it's easy enough to surmise that if women care about sports, and colleges care about attracting students, schools will offer women's sports if it is indeed important to women,

Title ix had it's moment but now competition for students/alumni dollars will do the trick.

Keep the revenue generators. Anything else, let the kids put them together as extra-curriculars for fun if they want. Sports are a hobby, people.

Not any more. There's too much money in it for that to be true. D1 athletic departments have become separate fiefdoms and act like heroine addicts - they just can't get enough. The point is, is that they provide scholarships to "student athletes" and Title IX is there to help support equall access to those scholarship dollars.

All of the "proportionality" issues are BS. A business can be sued if its diversity doesn't proportionally match the community's diversity. The business doesn't have enough blacks, or hispanics, or what have you but interest or qualifications in the position are non-existent, what does the company do?

In Florida there was a highschool boys baseball team where the parents got together and did a lot of fundraising and they built a great lighted field, concession stand, scoreboard, etc. They started playing. Then someone from the girls' softball team sued. The judge found for the girls' softball team and made the boys' team take out their totally parent funded improvements because it wasn't fair that the girls' didn't have an equivalent facility.

Probably a dumb question: what would be the effect, Title IX-wise, if the NCAA were to declare football to be a coed sport, with all roster spots open to women, but awarded on the basis of competition?

Or (since most schools would sport rosters that were 99% or more male) would the courts use some variation of "disparate impact" to say it didn't count?

A-floggin'-men. I left my dorm room at around 6am, got early breakfast, had to be at the arena for films of the previous day by 7. Class from 8-12, then lunch and back to the arena for practice and/or conditioning. Back to my dorm after dinner around 6pm.

In 2011 the University of Delaware celebrated it's 100th anniversary on Men's Track by dropping the team. The mealy-mouthed administrators offered diffuse and nonsensical reasons.

The track team has the highest GPA of all UD teams and probably comes the closet to the ideal of the student-athlete. Furthermore, it has historically been a tremendous incubator of high school coaches and teachers. Once again the UD shows disdain for Delaware public education.

Meanwhile the UD Athletic Department and football program nickles'n'dimes season ticket holders to pay ever increasing fees and surcharges. One of the most successful 1AA programs, UD Football has seen average attendance go from 23,500 to 17,000 in a mere 3 years. There has been repeated public outcry over the begging and hectoring coming from the Program. Like a good politician the AD brushes all public outcry aside with "it's the economy (stupid).

It's a popular misconception that wearing a bra keeps breasts from sagging. It is true that a bra can disguise the fact that a particular pair of breasts do sag, if you want to discourage sagging in the future, it's better to go braless, because the natural ligaments are strengthened and kept strong.

"[A]s women have grown to 57 percent of American colleges’ enrollment," nothing is being done to address this obvious gender inequality against men who are refused admission so that more women can attend college. Numbers don't lie do they?

[M]any are padding women’s team rosters with underqualified, even unwitting, athletes.

Did anyone seriously expect another outcome?

Seriously? Was anyone blinkered enough to really believe that there was simply equal underlying demand for sporting activities between males and females and that the only thing Keeping Women Out Of Sports was the evils of the Colleges?

Remove Title IX. Do it yesterday.

(As an aside, I'm with Patrick - "college sports" are a bad joke as an alleged promotion or relation to a mission of education. They're purely about money - which is fine, but I'd prefer they just admit it.)

The feministas thru Title IX have ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED minor sports for men (swimming, tennis, wrestling, etc.) at the college level.

And the "proof" that women aren't as interested in sports as men? The well-documented MUCH lower level of voluntary participation in intramural athletics in ALL sports at ALL colleges and universities in the US.

It's a popular misconception that wearing a bra keeps breasts from sagging. It is true that a bra can disguise the fact that a particular pair of breasts do sag, if you want to discourage sagging in the future, it's better to go braless, because the natural ligaments are strengthened and kept strong.

Or become a nurse and spend your working life lifting 300 pound little old ladies (or 500 pound lazy fat couch potatoes) in and out of bed.

It would seem requiring schools to have the same proportion of male/female athletes as the school population is a poor way to look at sports. Just offer the same athletic options to girls as boys: you have a boys swim team? Offer a girls' swim team too. If few athletes show up, then you have a small team. Why is this hard?

Big shock! Adult women aren't, as a population, as into playing sports as men.

And that's in big part because it's only in the last generation that it's become commonplace for a female not to be looked at like some kind of oddball, doing it. In short, for a long time we were kept out.

It's a popular misconception that wearing a bra keeps breasts from sagging. It is true that a bra can disguise the fact that a particular pair of breasts do sag, if you want to discourage sagging in the future, it's better to go braless, because the natural ligaments are strengthened and kept strong.

And that's in big part because it's only in the last generation that it's become commonplace for a female not to be looked at like some kind of oddball, doing it.

No female from my generation (I'm 31.) felt the least bit odd competing in sports. Every single girl I knew played some kind of sport in elementary and middle school. It was expected. The odd ones were the girls who didn't play.

Tell that to the sports medicine, grounds keeping, vending, and merchandise companies. Not to mention the municipalities that reap tax revenue on all of that commerce.

Yeah, those people aren't making money on ladies' golf or men's track and field. Like I said, it's fine to keep the revenue generators or the things that have real-world applications (like sports med, which is useful for non-athletes as well). If you can make money/value on people's hobbies, that's wonderful. But the stuff we're talking about is just a hobby for the athletes.

As Pete the Streak points out football is one of the few sports that is self-supporting at most colleges. Men's basketball is another. At Tennessee, football supports almost all other sports except men's basketball and women's basketball. Very few collges have a women's basketball team that is self-supporting like Tennessee's (for obvious reasons if you follow the sport).

...if you want to discourage sagging in the future, it's better to go braless, because the natural ligaments are strengthened and kept strong.

No, if you go braless the "natural ligaments" are not "strengthened and kept strong," they're stretched and made long. That's what causes sagging; strength has nothing to do with it. And that's why women don't burn bras anymore.

My daughter is a scholarship athlete at the University of Nebraska, and I am very impressed by NU's commitment to the spirit as well as the letter of Title IX. Football makes the money, but all the other teams get to spend it, and my daughter gets every single benefit the football players get (with the exception of a plane to fly them to away meets.) I also have a son who could not compete in Div. I because so many schools have eliminated their men's teams in his sport in order to comply with Title IX, so I can see both sides of the argument. One problem is, although the Title IX law gives schools three ways in which to comply, the courts have consistently ruled that only proportional representation fills the bill.

I looked through the comments and noone wrote about the obvious example of the real purpose of title IX.

Cheerleading is a sport, except when it isn't. According to cheer squads of all ages, it's a sport, And if you've ever cheered, or had a sister, daughter, friend, who cheered, you know it's a sport. According Title IX accounting, it isn't. Gotta have a legal reason to disenfranchise the males of the species. If the folks who devised this had their way, men would be kept barefoot and pregnant.

@Titus. I liked the bra antics. But, you're not fooling anyone. You've had womenz frendz before who confided everything to you. You know more about the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the womenz than any male on here.

When the government strings cash along with its mandates then guess what, people or in this cause Title IX users will gladly suckle at its tit. Oh especially if there are women involved. Have to stop the utter subjugation of women in America. It's E-ville. It's not a farce professor, it's American women being sold a bill of goods while the American public funds this nonsense with our tax dollars to create the perception of an even playing field.

"My observations gained while spending 5 years living in rural Africa is that this is not remotely true."

I'm sure there are a lot of nutritional issues involved there.

I read of a study done in Japan that tended to prove the point I'm asserting, and I have anecdotal evidence from American culture. But your results may vary. You won't know until it's too late, so I recommend wearing or not wearing a bra depending on your personal preference for the way it looks and feels. Don't worry about the sagging problem.